Coming Home

Leaving Austin was hard, harder perhaps because I had not anticipated how hard it would be.  Austin is my home.  Of all the places I have lived in my life, I have lived the longest in Austin.  So, length of living occurred there.  Significance of living too happened there.  I raised my son there; my daughter was born there.  I was married and educated there—educated in so many ways.

One of my oldest and dearest friends, Marian Henley, hosted us for our visit.  I thought the cadets would enjoy a home stay with a gracious family.  Marian’s husband, Rick Wupperman, and their son William extend the tradition of southern and Texan hospitality as we sat on their deck and swam in the pool overhanging the Texas hill country.  From homemade Guacamole and Hummus to breakfast pastries and organic coffee and easy conversation swirling through all, there is gentle grace in even the smallest things.  Marian knows me at my best and worst, in strength and weakness, and is still my friend.  Unlike Steinbeck, who dreaded attempting to describe his wife’s home state, it is my home, these my people.  I could do worse than show the cadets an inside view on a Texas household via this family.

As we drive south through Houston, I speak to Shawn of John Slatin, friend and professor.  I saw him just before his death, in the hospital the weekend Elizabeth’s dad and I dropped her at Rice University for her first semester of college.  Almost every turn in Austin and far too many exits along our route provoke memories and compel stories. 

I tell the cadets the story of the black and white stones as we drive toward LaGrange, Texas.  I had heard it growing up in Texas and again at West Point after I arrived, because the story is about West Point trained men.  Soldiers who were captured were commanded to reach into a vessel filled with black and white river stones. Half the men grasp a white stone; the other half black.  Those who pulled black were shot.  Those with white allowed to live.  A survivor later built a house in LaGrange, Texas, and paved his courtyard with black and white stones to commemorate his comrades.  As a very young child, I stood in that courtyard and remembered those men to whom Fate was particularly cruel.  I think I cannot escape Texas.  Even as we drive south and east, heading to the Louisiana border in our push toward New Orleans, I feel the threads of the past tethering me to Texas.  It may be time to come home.

~ Margaret Downs-Gamble